Pain-related behaviors associated with persistence of mechanical hyperalgesia after antigen-induced arthritis in rats

Upon transient musculoskeletal diseases, some patients develop persistent pain while others recover from pain. Here, we studied whether such heterogeneity also occurs in rats after recovery from unilateral antigen-induced arthritis (AIA) in the knee joint, and which pain phenotype may predict the course of pain. Typically, inflammatory swelling lasts about 3 weeks. Pain-related behaviors were monitored for 84 days after AIA induction. Unbiased cluster analysis of intragroup differences at day 84 of AIA revealed that about one-third of the rats (cluster 1) showed persistent mechanical hyperalgesia at the injected knee joint, whereas the other rats (cluster 2) had recovered from pain. Retrograde analysis of pain-related behaviors revealed that cluster 1 rats exhibited more severe mechanical hyperalgesia at the injected knee from day 3 of AIA and mechanical hyperalgesia at the contralateral knee. Cluster 1 and 2 rats did not show different inflammatory swelling, secondary mechanical and thermal hyperalgesia at the ipsilateral hindpaw, guarding score, and asymmetry of weight bearing during AIA. Thus, in particular, early severe mechanical hyperalgesia in the inflamed joint and segmental contralateral mechanical hyperalgesia seem to be a risk factor for the development of persistent mechanical hyperalgesia pointing to the importance of spinal mechanisms. However, none of the rats showed an expression of ATF3 in dorsal root ganglion neurons, nor morphological spinal microglia activation thus not suggesting development of neuropathic pain. Both clusters showed a persistent upregulation of pCREB in dorsal root ganglion neurons, inversely correlated with mechanical hyperalgesia at the knee. The role of pCREB needs to be further explored.

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